Opinion

• Opinion

  What Will Help on Guns?

  A troubling new play at Manhattan’s Public Theater begins with an eerie scene of a girl laid out on a table as if in a mortuary, and ends with an enigmatic question. For the 90 minutes in between, the audience witnesses what happens after a disturbed former student opens fire in the crowded library of…

  4 min read
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  Opinion

  Palestinian Unity and the Beggar of Chelm

  Palestinians in Gaza City on Wednesday celebrating Hamas-Fatah unity pact. / Getty Images Old Jewish joke: The beggar of Chelm goes to the rabbi’s house and pleads in a most pitiful tone: “Please rabbi, I haven’t eaten in days. Won’t you please give me a ruble to buy some food?” The rabbi is touched and…

  By J.J. Goldberg Apr 24, 2014 | 3 min read
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  Opinion

  Israel Hires Psychic Uri Geller To Fight Rockets

  Israeli psychic Uri Geller poses with a spoon that he bent in 2008 / Haaretz Really, can you blame them? Faced with ongoing rocket fire on the citizens it’s meant to protect, Israel’s military has done the only truly reasonable thing it could do: It hired a spoon-bending mentalist named Uri Geller. More than two…

  By Emily L. Hauser Apr 23, 2014 | 3 min read

Columnists View All

• Jay Michaelson What can really be done to prevent antisemitic attacks like Bondi Beach?

  

• Rob Eshman Australia shooting terrifies Jews worldwide — and strengthens the case for Israel

  

• Nora Berman Did crypto-Jews invent the modern tarot deck?

  

• Dan Perry The 3 responses to the Bondi Beach Hanukkah attack that could make Jews safer

  

• Emily Tamkin The fundamental miscalculation behind the GOP’s antisemitism crisis

  

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  Opinion

  Anat Hoffman’s Daughter Puts Women of the Wall to Film

  Tanya Hoffman is the daughter of Women of the Wall leader Anat Hoffman. / Haaretz “How I Stopped Hating Women of the Wall and Started Talking to My Mother.” That’s the title of an upcoming film by Tanya Hoffman, the 26-year-old daughter of firebrand feminist and Women of the Wall leader Anat Hoffman. The summer…

  By Sigal Samuel Apr 22, 2014 | 3 min read
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  Opinion

  Israel’s Bid For Visa Waiver Falls Short

  Getty Images Israel is making another push to join the U.S. visa waiver program, which would allow Israelis to enter the U.S. for 90 days without a visa. Last year, another effort to enlist Israel in the program stalled amid criticisms of Israel’s discrimination against Americans of Arab and Muslim origins at its border. In…

  By Ali Gharib Apr 22, 2014 | 4 min read
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  Opinion

  The Real Truth About Those Anti-Semitic Flyers in Donetsk

  The world has roared with indignation at the anti-Semitic flyers distributed by masked-men outside a synagogue in Donetsk, in Eastern Ukraine. The flyers ordered local Jews to register with the separatist Donetsk People’s Republic, in light of the fact that Jewish leaders in Kiev supported the Ukrainian “junta”. Since the Donetsk People’s Republic controls all…

  By David E. Fishman Apr 22, 2014 | 5 min read
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  Opinion

  What Jews Can Learn From Rwandans

  A woman consoles a fellow Rwandan at a genocide commemoration ceremony / Getty Images I am no Shmuley Boteach, God knows. But I have recently learned from the Forward that Boteach and I have one thing in common – we are both rabbis who have visited Rwanda. This February, on the eve of Rwanda’s commemoration…

  By Randy Kafka Apr 21, 2014 | 3 min read
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  Opinion

  2 Women Put a Darfuri Survivor Through College

  Guy Adam In the fall of 2010, I had recently arrived in Tel Aviv and had started my New Israel Fund Fellowship at ASSAF, a humanitarian aid organization helping asylum seekers and refugees in Israel. I met Guy around then at the ASSAF offices. He spoke English, so I explained to him that I was…

  By Maya Paley Apr 21, 2014 | 4 min read
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  Opinion

  Israel’s Uncomfortable History of Racist Engineering

  Late in March, Ebony magazine apologized after one of its senior editors made a racially charged dismissive comment on Twitter. Last November, two students at Lee University apologized for wearing blackface, with one noting, “We are deeply sorry for those we have upset.” Two recent incidents in Israel mirror these events, but the result was…

  By Seth J. Frantzman Apr 21, 2014 | 4 min read
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  Opinion

  Family Amulet Captures Jewish Life in India

  When my grandmother was pregnant with my dad, she got a terrible — and somewhat mysterious — mouth infection. It kept her from eating and talking. It was so painful that it landed her flat on her back; for days, all she could do was lie in bed. Then her bedroom door creaked open to…

  By Sigal Samuel Apr 21, 2014 | 3 min read
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  Opinion

  Does Israel Advocacy Belong on British Campuses?

  Young British Jews stake out a liberal stance on Israel. / YouTube American and British Jewish communal institutions alike are presently grappling with the question of what to do with the “evil son” — he who, in the words of the Passover Haggadah, “by divorcing himself from the community…denies our very essence.” In the United…

  By Liam Hoare Apr 20, 2014 | 3 min read